In many
great cities, tasting the best food the local scene has to offer means
conniving entry into either an haute establishment with prices to match or a
trendy, high-fashion venue that will be gone in a year. Bangkok is completely
different.

Much of
the best food in Bangkok is served in small, inexpensive places, often with
less than a dozen tables, that have been run by a single family for years or
even generations. In the past the usual way of finding out about a restaurant
of this kind was to be invited for a meal there by a friend who would present
it as a choice discovery. Now, in the age of the internet, traveling culinary
bloggers often point the way.

The thing
that makes these modest family-run places different from the more elaborate
restaurants is a distinctive style or character in the cooking. Thai cuisine
is very flexible – no two households will prepare even the most standard
recipes in the same way – and every dish made by a good chef is a personal
interpretation of a very general idea. Thai cookbooks give no quantities for
ingredients, because a good Thai cook works by instinct, tasting and
sniffing, correcting constantly.

It is this
traditional approach to kitchen technique that makes a meal at Chote Chitr
memorable. A dish you may have tasted in another Bangkok restaurant or even
abroad will reveal itself in a new way here. For example, the crispy noodle
dish called "mee krawp" in Thai has become an international
favorite, but these days it is very rarely made in a way that a Thai of 50
years ago would recognize. Chote Chitr’s version hews close to history,
however, by garnishing the dish with the rind of the wonderfully fragrant but
hard-to-find local citus, som saa.

Chote
Chitr is one of the oldest restaurants in Bangkok but looks much the same now
as it did when it opened in 10.00AM - 9.00PM. The dining area consists of
five teakwood tables in a single, small room that is dense with the
atmosphere of an earlier Bangkok. The square in which it is located, Phraeng
Phouthon, was one of the first commercial districts to form in Bangkok when
the riverside city crossed the canal called Khlong Lawt and moved inland. The
Kimangsawat family reserved the room where Chote Chitr is still located
before the antique shophouse it occupies was even built.

The
clientele is largely Thai, with many artists and writers among them, but
owner and chef Khun Tim speaks English and enjoys talking food with customers
if time allows. Almost anything chosen from the voluminous menus posted on
the walls will show the way in which she focuses old family recipes into
something personal, but be sure to try: